By David Brooks on July 31, 2023
photo: Bill Hackwell
Good journalism is essential not only to document, narrate and disseminate the events that are part of collective life, but also to raise awareness among the public in order to make them protagonists of their own history. But there are days, weeks, when it seems that the only thing we do – and it is something that has to be done – is to document so much cruelty, injustice and hypocrisy that we end up nurturing disenchantment and despair.
For example, it was revealed that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the richest country on the planet and in history. According to new research, including one published in the Journal of the American Association of Doctors https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2804032 poverty silently kills 10 times more people than homicides, and 2.5 times more than drug overdoses; an average of 500 people die every day from poverty, according to some estimates. Only heart disease, cancer and smoking-related deaths surpass poverty as the leading cause of death. The United States is number one in poverty among the 25 richest countries in the world, and one in five children live in poverty. According to one expert, just 1 percent of GDP, or $177 billion, could lift everyone out of poverty.
Last week, the Senate approved a military budget of $886 billion, the largest ever seen in the country’s history and five times more funding than it would take to lift everyone out of poverty in this country. The military budget passed by the Democratic-controlled upper chamber will surely be passed by the Republican-controlled lower chamber and signed into law by the Democrat in the White House, proving that there is nothing more bipartisan than the military-industrial complex. But apparently there is never any funding to address social needs, from health care, housing and education to a living wage.
On the other hand, Governor Greg Abbott, apparently in an intense competition to see who is the cruelest governor after issuing orders to push women and children into the Rio Grande and install a floating barbed wire wall there, signed into law a measure that nullifies the obligation of employers to offer water breaks to workers who work outside; all this in the midst of an unprecedented heat wave.
Also in Texas, in Houston, the organization Food not Bombs, which has been in existence since 1994, has now been fined by local authorities at least 30 times – $2,000 each – for “feeding the homeless”.
And as various parts of the country continue to suffer from record temperatures, storms, floods, droughts and other effects directly linked by scientists to climate change, the U.S. government, like so many others around the world, declare that they are committed to doing something, but continue to refuse to do the minimum necessary, including declaring a “climate emergency” and stopping approving new hydrocarbon projects. https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/ 1684738570911948800?s=43&t=q1o0F6JgQVtYKI9AXcl-nw
America’s progressive movement, fragmented and divided but larger and with more actual and potential power today than in decades, is responding to all these challenges and more with strikes, mobilizations, civil disobedience actions and political expressions both locally and nationally and denouncing the hypocrisies of the country that projects itself as the self-proclaimed leader of freedom, human rights and democracy as it violates almost all of them. Perhaps it is about to produce big news.
But there are weeks when one can only take solace in that saying that it is always darkest just before the dawn. If so, in America these days, it’s about time for the dawn to break. Maybe it’s already happening and all that’s left to do is report it. News on standby.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English